THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS
On the first day of January, 1831, there came out in Boston a new paper,
_The Liberator_, William Lloyd Garrison, editor. That was the beginning,
historians now generally agree, of "New Abolitionism." The editor of the
new paper was the founder of the new sect.
Benjamin Lundy was a predecessor of Garrison, on much the same lines as
those pursued by the latter. Lundy had previously formed many Abolition
societies. _The Philanthropist_ of March, 1828, estimated the number of
anti-slavery societies as "upwards of 130, and most of them in the slave
States, and of Lundy's formation, among the Quakers."[22] But Garrison
became the leader and Lundy the disciple.
[22] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. I.
Garrison was a man of pleasing personal appearance, abstemious in
habits, and of remarkable energy and will power. He was a vigorous and
forceful writer. Denunciation was his chief weapon, and he had "a genius
for infuriating his antagonists." The following is a fair specimen of
his style. Speaking of himself and his fellow-workers as the "soldiers
of God," he said: "Their feet are shod with the preparation of the
_gospel of peace_.... Hence, when smitten on one cheek they turn the
other also, being defamed they entreat, being reviled they bless," etc.
And on that same page,[23] and in the same prospectus, showing how he
"blesses" those who, as he understands, are outside of the "Kingdom of
God," he says: "All without are dogs and sorcerers, and ... and
murderers, and idolaters, and whatsoever loveth a lie."
[23] _Ib._, Vol. II, p. 202.
Mr. Garrison had no perspective, no sense of relation or proportion. In
his eye the most humane slave-holder was a wicked monster. He had a
genius for organization, and a year after the first issue of _The
Liberator_ he and his little body of brother fanatics had grown into the
New England Anti-Slavery Society.
The new sect called themselves for a time the "New Abolitionists,"
because their doctrines were new. The principles upon which this
organization was to be based were not all formulated at once. The
key-note was sounded in Garrison's "Address to the Public" in the first
number of _The Liberator_:
I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of
our slave population. I shall be as harsh as truth and as
uncompromising as justice on this subject. _I do not wish to think
or speak or write with moderation._
In an earlier issue, after denouncing slavery as a "damning crime," the
editor said: "Therefore my efforts shall be directed to _the exposure of
those who practise it_."
The substance of Garrison's teachings was that slavery, anywhere in the
United States, was the concern of all, and that it was to be put down by
making not only slavery but also the slave-holder odious. And, further,
it was the slave, not the slave-owner, who was entitled to compensation.
Thus the distinctive features of the new crusade were to be warfare upon
the personal character of every slave-holder and the confiscation of
his property. It was, too, the beginning of that sectional war by people
of the North against the existence of slavery in the South, which, as we
have seen, was deprecated by Dr. Channing in his letter three years
before to Mr. Webster.
The new sect began by assailing slavery in States other than their own,
and very soon they were openly denouncing the Constitution of their
country because under it slavery in those sections was none of their
business; and of course they repudiated the Missouri Compromise
absolutely, the essence of that compromise being that slavery was the
business of the States in which it existed.
It was a part of their scheme to send circulars depicting the evils of
slavery broadcast through the South; and they were sent especially to
the free negroes of that section.
"In 1820," says Dr. Hart in his "Slavery and Abolition," "at Charleston
(South Carolina), Denmark Vesey, a free negro, made an elaborate plot to
rise, massacre the white population, seize the shipping in the harbor,
and, if hard pressed, to sail away to the West Indies. One of the
negroes gave evidence, Vesey was seized, duly tried, and with
thirty-four others was hanged."[24]
[24] Hart's "Slavery and Abolition," p. 163.
This plot, so nearly successful, was fresh in the minds of Southerners
when the Abolitionists began their programme, and naturally, the South
at once took the alarm--an alarm that was increased by the massacre, in
the Nat Turner insurrection, of sixty-one men, women, and children,
which took place in Virginia seven months after the first issue of _The
Liberator_. One of Turner's lieutenants is stated to have been a free
negro. This insurrection the South attributed to _The Liberator_.
Professor Hart says a free negro named Walker had previously sent out to
the South, from Boston, a pamphlet, "the tone of which was
unmistakable," and that "this pamphlet is known to have reached
Virginia, and may possibly have influenced the Nat Turner
insurrection."[25]
[25] _Ib._, pp. 217-20.
If this surmise be correct, knowledge that Walker, a free negro, had
been responsible for the Turner insurrection, would have lessened
neither the guilt of the Abolitionists nor the fears of the Southerners.
But in 1832 Abolition agitation and the fears of insurrection had not
as yet entirely stifled the discussion of slavery in the South. A debate
on slavery took place that year in the Virginia Assembly, the immediate
cause of which was no doubt the Turner insurrection. The members of that
body had not been elected on any issue of that character. The discussion
thus precipitated shows, therefore, the state of public opinion in
Virginia on slavery. Of this debate a distinguished Northern writer
says:[26]
[26] "Life of James Buchanan," George Ticknor Curtis, vol. II, pp.
277-78.
"In the year 1832 there was, nowhere in the world, a more enlightened
sense of the wrong and evil of slavery than there was among the public
men and people of Virginia."
In the Assembly of that year Mr. Randolph brought forward a bill _to
accomplish gradual emancipation_. Mr. Curtis continues:
"No member of the House defended slavery.... There could be nothing said
anywhere, there had been nothing said out of Virginia, stronger and
truer in deprecating the evils of slavery, than was said in that
discussion, by Virginia gentlemen, debating in their own legislature, a
matter that concerned themselves and their people."
The bill was not pressed to a vote, but the House, by a vote of 65 to
38, declared "that they were profoundly sensible of the great evils
arising from the condition of the colored population of the Commonwealth
and were induced by policy, as well as humanity, to attempt the
immediate removal of the free negroes; but that further action for the
_removal of the slaves should await a more definite development of
public opinion_."
Mr. Randolph, who was from the large slave-holding county of Albemarle,
was re-elected to the next assembly.
But when the early summer of 1835 had come the fear of insurrection had
created such wide-spread terror throughout the whole South that every
emancipation society in that region had long since closed its doors; and
now the Abolitionists were sending South their circulars in numbers.
Many were sent to Charleston, South Carolina,[27] where fifteen years
before[28] the free negro, Denmark Vesey, had laid the plot to massacre
the whites, that had been discovered just in time to prevent its
consummation.
[27] Referred to in "Life of Andrew Jackson," W. G. Sumner, p. 350.
[28] Hart, _supra._
The President, Andrew Jackson, in his next message to Congress,
December, 1835, called their "attention to the painful excitement
produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails
_inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints
and in various sorts of publications calculated to stimulate them to
insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war_."
The good people of Boston were now thoroughly aroused. They had from the
first frowned on the Abolition movement. Garrison was complaining that
in all the city his society could not "hire a hall or a meeting-house."
The Abolition idea had been for a time thought chimerical and therefore
negligible. Later, civic, business, social, and religious organizations
had all of them in their several spheres been earnest and active in
their opposition; now it seemed to be time for concerted action.
In Garrison's "Garrison" (vol. I, p. 495), we read that "the _social_,
_political_, _religious and intellectual elite_ of Boston filled
Faneuil Hall on the afternoon of Friday, August 3, 1835, to frame an
indictment against their fellow-citizens."
This "indictment" the _Boston Transcript_ reported as follows:
_Resolved_, That the people of the United States by the
Constitution under which, by the Divine blessing, they hold their
most valuable political privileges, have solemnly agreed with each
other to leave to their respective States the jurisdiction
pertaining to the relation of master and slave within their
boundaries, and that no man or body of men, except the people of
the governments of those States, can of right do any act to
dissolve or impair the obligations of that contract.
_Resolved_, That we hold in reprobation all attempts, in whatever
guise they may appear, to coerce any of the United States to
abolish slavery by _appeals to the terror of the master or the
passions of the slave_.
_Resolved_, That we disapprove of all associations instituted in
the non-slave-holding States with the intent to act, within the
slave-holding States, on the subject of slavery in those States
without their consent. For the purpose of securing freedom of
individual thought they are needless--and they afford to those
persons in the Southern States, whose object is to effect a
dissolution of the Union (if any such there may be now or
hereafter), a pretext for the furtherance of their schemes.
_Resolved_, That all measures adopted, _the natural and direct
tendency of which is to excite the slaves of the South to revolt,
or of spreading among them a spirit of insubordination_, are
repugnant to the duties of the man and the citizen, and that where
such measures become manifest by overt acts, which are recognizable
by constitutional laws, we will aid by all means in our power in
the support of those laws.
_Resolved_, That while we recommend to others the duty of
sacrificing their opinions, passions and sympathies upon the altar
of the laws, we are bound to show that a regard to the supremacy of
those laws is the rule of our conduct--and consequently to
deprecate all tumultuous assemblies, all riotous or violent
proceedings, all outrages on person and property, and all illegal
notions of the right or duty of executing summary and vindictive
justice in any mode unsanctioned by law.
The allusion in the last resolution is to a then recent lynching of
negroes in Mississippi charged with insurrection.
In speaking to these resolutions, Harrison Gray Otis, a great
conservative leader, denounced the Abolition agitators, accusing them of
"wishing to 'scatter among our Southern brethren _firebrands_, _arrows_,
and _death_,' and of attempting to force Abolition by appeals to the
terror of the masters and the passions of the slaves," and decrying
their "measures, the natural and direct tendency of which is to excite
the slaves of the South to revolt," etc.
Another of the speakers, ex-Senator Peleg Sprague, said (p. 496,
Garrison's "Garrison") that "if their sentiments prevailed it would be
all over with the Union, which would give place to two hostile
confederacies, with forts and standing armies."
These resolutions and speeches, viewed in the light of what followed,
read now like prophecy.
It is a familiar rule of law that a contemporaneous exposition of a
statute is to be given extraordinary weight by the courts, the reason
being that the judge then sitting knows the surrounding circumstances.
That Boston meeting pronounced the deliberate judgment of the most
intelligent men of Boston on the situation, as they knew it to be that
day; it was in their midst that _The Liberator_ was being published;
there the new sect had its head-quarters, and there it was doing its
work.
Quite as strong as the evidence furnished by that great Faneuil Hall
meeting is the testimony of the churches.
The churches and religious bodies in America had heartily favored the
general anti-slavery movement that was sweeping over all America between
1770 and 1831, while it was proceeding in an orderly manner and with due
regard to law.
In 1812 the Methodist General Conference voted that no slave-holder
could continue as a local elder. The Presbyterian General Assembly in
1818 unanimously resolved that "slavery was a gross violation of the
most precious and moral rights of human nature," etc.
These bodies represented both the North and the South, and this
paragraph shows what was, and continued to be, the general attitude of
American churches until after the Abolitionists had begun their assault
on both slavery in the South and the Constitution of the United States,
which protected it. Then, in view of the awful social and political
cataclysm that seemed to be threatened, there occurred a stupendous
change. We learn from Hart that Garrison "soon found that neither
minister _nor church anywhere in the lower South continued_ (as before)
to protest against slavery; _that the cloth in the North was arrayed
against him_; and that many Northern divines vigorously opposed him."
Also that Moses Stuart, professor of Hebrew in Andover Theological
Seminary; President Lord, of Dartmouth College, and Hopkins, the
Episcopal bishop of Vermont, now became defenders of slavery. "The
positive opposition of churches soon followed."
And then we have cited, condemnations of Abolitionism by the Methodist
Conference of 1836, by the New York Methodist Conference of 1838, by the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by the American
Home Missionary Society, the American Bible Society, the Protestant
Episcopal Church, and the Baptists. See for these statements, Hart, pp.
211-12.
The import of all this is unmistakable; and this "about-face" of
religious organizations on the question of the morality of slavery has
no parallel in all the history of Christian churches. Its significance
cannot be overstated. It took place North and South. It meant opposition
to a movement that was outside the church _and with which religion could
have no concern, except in so far as it was a vital assault upon the
State, and the peace of the State_. To make their opposition effective
the Christians of that day did this remarkable thing. _They reversed
their religious views on slavery, which the Abolitionists were now
assailing, and which they themselves had previously opposed._ They
re-examined their Bibles and found arguments that favored slavery. These
arguments they used in an attempt to stem an agitation that, as they saw
it, was arraying section against section and threatening the perpetuity
of the Union.
United testimony from all these Christian bodies is more conclusive
contemporaneous evidence against the agitators and their methods than
even the proceedings of all conservative Boston at Faneuil Hall in
August, 1835.
This new attitude of the church toward slavery meant perhaps also
something further--it meant that slavery, as it actually existed, was
not then as horrible to Northerners, who could go across the line and
see it, which many of them did, as it is now to those whose ideas of it
come chiefly from "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
In view of this phenomenal movement of Northern Christians it is not
strange that Southern churches adhered, throughout the deadly struggle
that was now on, to the position into which they had been driven--that
slavery was sanctioned by the Bible--nor is it matter of wonder that, as
Professor Hart makes prominent on p. 137, "not a single Southern man of
large reputation and influence failed to stand by slavery."
Historians of to-day usually narrate without comment that nearly all the
American churches and divines at first opposed the Abolitionists. It
illustrates the courage with which the Abolitionists stood, as Dr. Hart
delights to point out, "for a despised cause." They assuredly did stand
by their guns.
Later, another change came about in the attitude of the churches. In
1844 the Abolitionists were to achieve their first victory in the great
religious world. The Methodist Church was then disrupted, "squarely on
the question whether a bishop could own slaves, and all the Southern
members withdrew and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, South."
Professor Hart, p. 214, says of this: "Clearly, the impassioned
agitation of the Abolitionists had made it impossible for a great number
of Northern anti-slavery men _to remain on terms of friendship with
their Southern brethren_."
That great Faneuil Hall meeting of August 31, 1835, was followed some
weeks later by a lamentable anti-Garrison mob, which did not stand
alone. In the years 1835, 1836, and 1837 a great wave of anti-Abolition
excitement swept over the North. In New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati,
Alton (Illinois), and many other places, there were anti-Abolition
riots, sometimes resulting in arson and bloodshed.
The heart of the great, peace-loving, patriotic, and theretofore happy
and contented North, was at that time stirred with the profoundest
indignation against the Abolitionists. Northern opinion then was that
the Abolitionists, by their unpatriotic course and their nefarious
methods, were driving the South to desperation and endangering the
Union. If the North at that time saw the situation as it really was, the
historian of the present day should say so. If, on the other hand, the
people of both the North and South were then laboring under delusions,
as to the facts that were occurring among them, those of this
generation, who are wiser than their ancestors, should give us the
sources of their information. To know the lessons of history we must
have the facts.[29]
[29] The late Professor William Graham Sumner, of Yale, in his "Life of
Andrew Jackson," 1888, treats of the excitement at Charleston, South
Carolina, in 1835, during Jackson's administration, over Abolition
circulars, etc. Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at
Harvard, in his "Abolition and Slavery," 1906, treats of the same
subject. The following extracts from these books will show how these
authors picture that exciting period, and our italics will emphasize the
_sang-froid_ with which they touch off what so profoundly affected
public sentiment, both North and South, _when the events were
occurring_. Professor Sumner has this to say:
"The Abolition Society adopted the policy of sending documents, papers,
and pictures against slavery to the Southern States.
"_If the intention was_, as charged, to excite the slaves to revolt,
_the device, as it seems to us now_, must have fallen short of its
object, for the chance that anything could get into the hands of the
black man must _have been poor indeed_.
"These publications, however, caused _a panic_ and _a wild indignation_
in the South."--Sumner's "Jackson," p. 350.
Why should the Southerners of that day go _wild_ over conduct for which
the professor of this era has no word of condemnation?
Dr. Hart follows Professor Sumner's treatment. These are his words:
"The free negroes of the South, the Abolitionists could not reach except
by _mailing publications to them_, a process which _fearfully
exasperated_ the South _without reaching the persons
addressed_."--Hart's "Abolition and Slavery," p. 216.
Why should Southerners be "fearful" when they were intercepting all the
dangerous circulars, etc., they could find? And why should they be
exasperated at all?
Dr. Hart's chair at Harvard is within gunshot of Faneuil Hall, yet the
great meeting there of August 31, 1835, is not mentioned in either his
or Professor Sumner's book, nor is there to be found in either of them
_any explanation of the reasons underlying the general and emphatic
condemnation throughout the North at that period of the Abolitionists
and their methods_.
In 1854, at Framingham, Massachusetts, the Abolitionists celebrated the
Fourth of July thus: Their leader, William Lloyd Garrison, held up and
burned to ashes, before the applauding multitude, one after another,
copies of
1st. The fugitive slave law.
2d. The decision of Commissioner Loring in the case of Burns, a fugitive
slave.
3d. The charge to the Grand Jury of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis in
reference to the effort of a mob to secure a fugitive slave.
4th. "Then, holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as
the source and parent of all other atrocities, 'a covenant with death
and an agreement with hell,' and consumed it to ashes on the spot,
exclaiming, 'So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the
people say, Amen!' A tremendous shout of 'Amen!' went up to heaven in
ratification of the deed, mingled with a few hisses and wrathful
exclamations from some, who evidently were in a _rowdyish_ state of
mind, but who were at once cowed by the popular feeling."[30]
[30] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 412.
The Abolitionist movement was radical; it was revolutionary. When an
accredited teacher of history, in one of the greatest of our
universities, writes a volume on "Abolition and Slavery," why should he
restrict himself in comment, as Dr. Hart thus does in his preface? The
book is "intended to show that there was more than one side to the
controversy, and that both the milder form of opposition called
anti-slavery and _the extreme form called Abolition_, were _confronted
by practical difficulties_ which to many public men seemed
insurmountable."
Why should not the historian, in addition to pointing out the
"difficulties" encountered by these extremists, _show how and why the
people of that day condemned their conduct_?
Condonation of the Abolitionists, and a proper regard for the
Constitution of the United States, cannot be taught to the youth of
America at one and the same time.
The writer has been unable to find any of the incendiary pamphlets that
had proved so inflammatory. He has, however, before him a little
anonymous publication entitled "Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon
Woman," Isaac Knapp, Boston, 1837. It was for circulation in the North,
being "Affectionately Inscribed to all the Members of Female
Anti-Slavery Societies," and it is only cited here as an illustration of
the almost inconceivable venom with which the crusade was carried on to
_embitter the North against the South_. It is a vicious attack upon the
morality of Southern men and women, and upon Southern churches. None of
its charges does it claim to authenticate, and it gives no names or
dates. One incident, related as typical, is of two white women, all the
time in full communion with their church, under pretence of a
boarding-house, keeping a brothel, negro women being the inmates.
In the chapter entitled "Impurity of the Christian Churches" is this
sentence: "At present the Southern Churches are only one vast
consociation of hypocrites and sinners."
The booklet was published anonymously, but at that time any prurient
story about slavery in the South would circulate, no matter whether
vouched for or not.